TS.4.4 Palaeoclimate Studies of Attribution

It is very likely that climate changes of at least the seven centuries prior to 1950 were not due to unforced variability alone. Detection and attribution studies indicate that a substantial fraction of pre-industrial NH inter-decadal temperature variability contained in reconstructions for those centuries is very likely attributable to natural external forcing. Such forcing includes episodic cooling due to known volcanic eruptions, a number of which were larger than those of the 20th century (based on evidence such as ice cores), and long-term variations in solar irradiance, such as reduced radiation during the Maunder Minimum. Further, it is likely that anthropogenic forcing contributed to the early 20th-century warming evident in these records. Uncertainties are unlikely to lead to a spurious agreement between temperature reconstructions and forcing reconstructions as they are derived from independent proxies. Insufficient data are available to make a similar SH evaluation. {6.6, 9.3}